Gossip site offers juicy’ items about college students, professors

Thursday

Mar 27, 2008 at 12:01 AMMar 27, 2008 at 10:35 AM

College officials continue to warn students about the threat of revealing too much on social networking Web sites, but a new danger has appeared on the horizon and it may be something they can’t do anything about. The 8-month-old Juicy Campus Web site allows people to anonymously post anything they want about anyone.

Rob Montana

College officials continue to warn students about the threat of revealing too much on social networking Web sites, but a new danger has appeared on the horizon and it may be something they can’t do anything about.

The 8-month-old Juicy Campus Web site allows people to anonymously post anything they want about anyone. The header of the site — “C’mon. Give us the juice. Posts are totally, 100% anonymous.” — encourages people to offer up gossipy tidbits about classmates or other campus goings-on, and without fear of retribution.

Even with fairly anonymous capabilities of MySpace or Facebook, there seems to be the ability to determine who’s taking the shots. That’s not the case with Juicy Campus — at least not right now.

“The major concern here, as we look at the site, is it promotes being anonymous,” said Steven Tyrell, vice president of student affairs at Alfred State College in northern New York. “If you’re passing on information about other people, it could be harmful to them, it could have an impact on their image. It’s really unfair.

“The Internet is a great place and a lot of wonderful learning happens,” he said. “This isn’t one of them. It promotes harmful behavior to others, and I would hope our students would find a different way to resolve their differences.”

Kathy Woughter, vice president of student affairs at Alfred University in northern New York, said the site is definitely on her radar as a danger, as it is with most of her colleagues. She said there is a great potential for harm with MySpace, Facebook and, now, Juicy Campus.

“I think the potential is just as great as it is when students post on Facebook, MySpace or even YouTube,” Woughter said. “There is no student graduating right now that doesn’t have one of those pages.

“I think it’s dangerous because students are under the impression they control the information about them on the Web. They don’t,” she said.

The Chronicle of Higher Education said the state of New Jersey is investigating the site, and some students from colleges around the country have requested their schools block access to the message board.

Woughter said her university has not blocked the site and no requests to do so have been made. Even if blocking it was sought by students, she said she’d have a hard time doing so.

“I’m not generally in favor of blocking. I would have to think long and hard before doing that, and it would not be a sole decision on my part,” Woughter said. “As an academic institution, students, faculty and staff should be evaluate the information they receive, and blocking doesn’t allow for that.

“If there is a violation of university policy, that’s another story,” she added.

Alfred State also has not taken any action, nor have any students approached the administration to do so, Tyrell said.

“If the students on our campus asked us to block it, we probably would, but we wouldn’t do it otherwise,” he said. “It’s a tough one, because you find this stuff harmful to students, but we encourage people to understand their rights and freedoms, including freedom of expression.